October 20, 2012: 7:15 PM - 10:00 PM

Where

Event Details

The Harvard Club of the United Kingdom would like to welcome you to the 10th annual Oxford Dinner to be held at St. Peter's College Oxford on Saturday, October 20th 2012. Dinner will start promptly at 8:00pm in the College Hall. Guests are invited to assemble in the Chapel from 7:15pm for a sparkling wine reception.

Cost

Tickets are £65 for invitees and their guests

Registration

Speaker Profiles

Dr. Samuel Pisar (Speaker)

Our distinguished guest speaker this year will be Dr. Samuel Pisar. Born in Poland, Dr Pisar endured both Soviet occupation and Nazi internment at Auschwitz and other concentration camps before emerging, at age 16, as the sole survivor of his family and his school. After the war he lived and studied in Australia, the United States and France, earning a law degree (with honours) from Melbourne University, doctorates from Harvard and the Sorbonne, and honorary doctorates from other prestigious universities. His academic mentors have included Sir Zelman Cowen, former Provost of Oxford's Oriel College and Governor General of Australia, and Professor Peter Carter of Wadham College. Immersed in British, American and French legal culture, he was admitted to practice at the New York, London and Paris Bars.

In 1961, Dr Pisar was awarded American citizenship by a special Act of Congress while serving as an adviser to President John. F Kennedy, the State Department and Committees of the Senate and the House of Representatives. As a lawyer, he has counselled the United Nations, the International Olympic Committee, governments, banks, corporations and movie producers. He has also served as Trustee of Washington's Brookings Institution and director of various public foundations. Recently he was named Honorary Ambassador and Special Envoy of UNESCO for education relative to the Holocaust, genocides, ethnic cleansings and other mass atrocities. A widely read author published in 20 languages, his seminal work, Coexistence and Commerce, helped inspire the Nixon-Kissinger policy of East-West detente as an antidote to the nuclear arms race. His memoir, "Of Blood and Hope", was acclaimed as a powerful commentary on our times, touching the depths and heights of human experience. In the 1970s, he was nominated and shortlisted for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Dr Pisar holds high rank in the French Legion of Honour, the Order of Arts and Letters, the Polish Order of Merit and the Order of Australia. At the 50th commemoration of the Allied Victory in Europe, President Bill Clinton publicly related the saga of his tragic adolescence and miraculous liberation by American GI's, while President Jacques Chirac cited his life and work in a historic speech assuming, in the name of France, the Vichy regime's crimes against humanity. In 1989, Maestro Leonard Bernstein invited him to write and narrate the text for a global concert on the 50th anniversary of the outbreak of World War II, broadcast by the B.B.C., and to compose a libretto for his monumental Symphony No. 3, « Kaddish », which Dr Pisar has since performed with renowned orchestras at the Barbican in London and in other world capitals.